"You have caused terrific loss to many of your fellow Americans," said the judge. The defendant, Anthony ("Tino") De Angelis, folded his hands over his paunch and shifted nervously from foot to foot. He had pleaded guilty to four federal counts of fraud and conspiracy, and last week in a Newark courtroom, the time had come for sentencing.
Federal Judge Reynier J. Wortendyke sentenced De Angelis to ten years in prison—but with a surprising twist. Invoking a new section of the federal criminal code, he turned De Angelis over to the personal custody of U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. FBI agents will continue to question De Angelis about his tangled affairs. In August, U.S. Director of Prisons Myrl Alexander will report to the judge and 1) affirm the sentence, 2) suggest a reduction, or 3) recommend that De Angelis be put on probation immediately. If he cooperates in answering the many riddles that remain, he could go free within three months.
Embarrassed Bankers. So climaxed the latest chapter in the continuing, incredible soybean scandal—the most prodigious swindle in modern times, reaching out from the grimy waterfront of Bayonne, N.J., and involving big commodities dealers in Buenos Aires, recipients of U.S. foreign aid in Karachi, and a numbered bank account in Zurich. Sixteen companies have been bankrupted. Eleven firms controlled by De Angelis have gone under, as have two respected Wall Street brokerage houses and one subsidiary of American Express Co. Embarrassed bankers from London to San Francisco have been taken for many millions. So have De Angelis' customers, notably the Isbrandtsen Shipping Line, and such worldwide commodities dealers as Continental Grain Co. and the Bunge Corp.
The affair is far from over. The Department of Agriculture is studying measures to tighten up the easy rules for trading in grains, oils, pork bellies and other commodities. A wide variety of companies and individuals have filed a total of 160 damage claims contending that Tino De Angelis took them for $219 million.
Compared with that, Charles Ponzi, Lowell Birrell, Eddie Gilbert and Billie Sol Estes were pikers. Only Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish match king who in the 1920s defrauded investors of $500 million, ever topped Tino. More than that, De Angelis presents the classic example of how a man can exploit a complicated situation and use the credulity of high financiers for tremendous gain.
Gut Expert. De Angelis hardly looks the part of an international swindler. Short, fat and 50, he wears pearl grey ties and a perpetual look of hurt innocence. Although he pleaded guilty, he continues to blame his troubles on jealous competitors ("Powerful forces were working against me") and on the Department of Agriculture ("They called me a guinea bastard down there").
The son of poor Italian immigrants, De Angelis was forced to quit high school to support his parents. Starting out as a meat cutter in The Bronx, he devised a method for speedily dismembering hogs by slicing them up on a moving assembly line. That helped him get a $10,000 loan to open his own pork-packing plant. While still in his 20s, he built it into the largest such operation in the Eastern U.S. and sold copious quantities of meat to the federal school-lunch program.